In his new exposition at valerie_traan in Antwerp, Philip Aguirre is exhibiting a series of monumental sculptures in dialogue with some of his older works which have never been on display.

The title "NO" is taken from a series of small sculptures which Aguirre created around 2010 after reading the manifesto "Indignez Vous", "Time for Outrage” by the French writer, diplomat, ambassador, and politician Stéphane Hessel (1917-2013). The author writes of his indignation and anger in the face of injustice in the world.
This indignation is one that Philip Aguirre shares with Hessel. This indignation is Aguirre's humanistic drive to create beauty. Beauty as a response to injustice, war, poverty. Beauty is a force, beauty can touch, can comfort, can provoke reflection.
Aguirre studied sculpture in the early 1980s when conceptualism, minimalism and other movements were dictating the art world. These movements and innovations had a profound impact on the young student. But Aguirre also had a great fascination for the classical sculpture of Etruscans, Egyptians, Greeks, Africans.
He became convinced at the time that it should be possible to combine all these insights and thus to arrive at a sculptural practice that is truly contemporary.
In the sculptures on display, Aguirre seeks to narrate in a layered, sometimes cryptic, sometimes in a more direct way his thoughts and feelings about the "human condition”.
Narrating through doubt.

The exhibition also includes a monumental wall textile called "Hommage à un ami," created in Senegal in collaboration with the couturier Lamine Tounkara.
A tribute to good friend Ass Malick Sarr with whom Philip Aguirre worked for years in Senegal. He was one of the few young men who did not want to emigrate to Europe. Passed away at the age of 52 due to lack of medical infrastructure.
The work is a happy, colourful, and hopeful picture of the fishing village of friend Ass.

Artists: Philip Aguirre y Otegui